Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the change in the number of children requiring autism support since the commencement of the Children and Families Act 2014.

We publish the number and proportion of pupils with special educational needs (SEN), including the type of need in the annual ‘SEN in England’ statistical release:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-special-educational-needs-sen.

Pupils with SEN are recorded according to their primary type of need. Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is included as a type of need.

The table below shows a breakdown of the number of pupils with ASD as their primary type of need from 2015 to 2018 (as at January each year):

Source: School Census